Because no one knows the day or hour of Christ’s return, every disciple must live in constant readiness through watchfulness, faithful obedience, personal preparedness, and holy conduct. Jesus did not ask us to calculate the day; He commanded us to be ready for it.
The New Testament church spread the gospel to the whole world through the missionary zeal of independent local congregations — each one God’s fully equipped unit for evangelism — and that pattern, not human zeal alone, is how the work is to be done. The early…
Because the church is a body of members held to a standard of Christian conduct, it has both the right and the duty to discipline disorderly members — teaching and admonishing them toward repentance, withdrawing from the impenitent, and restoring the penitent — and the neglect…
The Greek word ekklesia means “called out,” and a survey of its New Testament uses shows it applied to the local congregation (in several senses), to the one universal church, and to the household assembly — but never to a denomination. Doctrine often turns on a…
The same office is named by several scriptural words — overseer, elder, shepherd, ruler, leader — and its qualifications, twenty in all from Timothy and Titus, are not impossibly high but are largely the marks of a mature Christian, attainable now as they were then. Many…
This warning from the Lord establishes the terrifying possibility that one can acknowledge Jesus verbally and intellectually yet be rejected at the judgment for a lack of obedient action.
Content: Planning without God is arrogant boasting, and James calls it evil. Ecclesiastes reminds us that God appoints the times, and James warns that life is a vapor. The faithful alternative is humble submission: “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” This lesson calls us to repent of self-rule and bring every plan under the Lord’s authority.
The millennial theory is built on a single figurative text in the most symbolic book of the New Testament. Every other fundamental doctrine of the New Testament is taught repeatedly in plain language. The Millennium is not. Only speculative teaching can be given for it —…
The New Testament is the inspired Word of God because Christ, who possessed all authority, delegated it to the apostles, and the Holy Spirit guaranteed the accuracy and completeness of their record. Some people accept the Old Testament as inspired by God but hold the New…
Paul’s five rapid charges — watch, stand fast in the faith, act like men, be strong, and let all be done in love — together outline the whole of Christian conduct: alert, steadfast, courageous, strong, and governed by love. Some Scriptures instruct, some comfort, some command…